Dwarf Planet Ceres Thrills as a Dying Visitor Closes In

Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science

The Planetary Society

Technology, Science

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 4 July 2018

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ceres is the queen of the asteroid belt. Her first Earthly visitor is nearing its last days in spectacular style. Dawn Mission Director and Chief Engineer Marc Rayman returns with stunning images taken from just 35 kilometers or 22 miles above the dwarf planet, and a preview of the spacecraft’s last days. Planetary Society Chief Scientist Bruce Betts has a summer guide to the night sky, looks back in space exploration history and delivers another Random Space Fact. He and Mat Kaplan also have a new space trivia question for listeners. Learn more about all our topics this week: http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2018/0704-2018-marc-rayman-dawn-ceres.htmlLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Transcript

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0:00.0	A spectacular last act above the Queen of Asteroids this week on planetary radio.
0:07.0	Welcome, I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our
0:16.3	solar system and beyond.
0:18.8	Mark Raymond is back with the latest on the Dawn spacecraft, now orbiting fantastically low over dwarf planet
0:26.7	series it's the closing chapter in dawn's superbly successful mission our ongoing mission with Bruce Betts is to bring you
0:34.3	the best of the night sky along with a look back through space history and a random
0:38.9	space factor to that and the weekly space trivia contest, Bruce will join us right after we talk with
0:45.4	Mark. Dr. Raymond is a Jet Propulsion Lab veteran who serves as Mission Director
0:50.9	and Chief Engineer for Dawn. The spacecraft began its trek to the
0:55.4	asteroid belt almost 11 years ago. It spent over a year exploring Vesta before
1:00.6	firing up its ion engines for the trip to series. The excitement at
1:05.1	series began even before dawn went into orbit and has only increased as
1:10.0	the spacecraft has revealed more and more about this not so tiny world that is nearly 1,000
1:16.1	kilometers or nearly 600 miles across.
1:19.8	Mark Raymond, great to get you back, always great to get you on the show.
1:23.4	And if you will pardon the 60s television reference,
1:27.6	holy wonders of the solar system, Raymond,
1:31.4	your little ion-powered wonder has outdone itself.
1:35.0	Well, thanks, Matt.
1:38.0	It's always good to be on your radio show.
1:39.7	I love it.
1:40.3	And I'm not sure I could have said it better myself. I'm really delighted with how well Dawn is doing right now, orbiting dwarf planet series.
	...

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